“And look where we are, Ruben. She will get through it? Yes, thank God, I hope she will. But is that the best thing we can say? Really? She nearly fucking died. Dress it up any way you like, but that’s the fact. Could you live with yourself, had it cost more? I know I couldn’t have. She counted on us, and we let her down. We’re the ones that are supposed to know this business. The boundaries. The tricks and the traps. We all fell into this one. I just hope she doesn’t have to pay anymore than she already has for our mistake.”
Chris walked away as the nurses rolled Ava into surgery, saying he was going to get some coffee. It would no doubt be a long wait. Ruben was left alone with his thoughts, a dark and depressing lot they were. He placed his hands on his knees and bent low. Chris knew him better than anyone. What if he was right? What if Ruben was fooling himself? Had he given this the proper thought? Had he voluntarily offered up Ava as a sacrifice to lions when she trusted him? And the worst thought of all, as he crumbled to a seated positioned against the wall, was if yes, then whatever happened to Ava was all his fault.
15
Jasmine stirredthe chicken stir fry with one hand, gingerly tapping her bruised throat with a face washer dipped in iced water. The wedding had gone off without a hitch. The honeymoon had provided the groom with countless hours of sex, so much so that Jasmine came back whiter than when she left. She had hoped that, after a few weeks, the sex would get better.
Well, gentler.
But it had gotten worse. Harder. Jasmine had discovered things about him she’d only suspected before. Adam liked to dominate. The more sex he had, the more he wanted. The more he demanded.
The trouble was he was the only one enjoying it. She could count on half a hand the amount of orgasms she’d had since they started. She asked him to slow down. To be gentle. If he didn’t completely ignore her requests, due to blind lust, he was clumsy.
There was one occasion when he had listened, only to round on her. He’d wanted to know how she knew where she liked to be kissed. Who was it that pleasured her so well she wanted him to copy it? Jasmine didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. That night, their bed broke from the force of his thrusting as he pulled her hair, squeezed her throat and bit her. Wanting to know again and again that Jasmine’s pussy belonged to him. That no one else loved her but him.
Jasmine wouldn’t call it love making. There was no love in making it at all. It was obsession. Crazed sexual obsession. She had asked him to go to counselling, to a sex therapist. THAT had erupted their biggest fight ever.
He was not the problem, he’d said. It was a man’s duty to fuck his wife. Having a need to be satisfied by his wife was natural, and she needed to stop trying to make him feel guilty for simply doing as nature intended.
From then on, Jasmine stopped trying to fix their marriage and just went with the flow. She shut up and let him do what he would. She was a wife now but not an equal. That had been made perfectly clear. She cooked, cleaned and spoke very little except to say, “Dinner’s ready!”
He came into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck.Why can’t he be like this more often?
“Smells great... Food does too,” he murmured. “Let’s have a shower before we eat.”
“I’ve had one. We both know nothing about a shower is going to get anything clean,” she replied. “We’ve had sex twice today.”
“Have another one... who’s counting...” he pushed, cupping her breasts from behind.
Jesus Christ Almighty. “Get it started... ” She took a deep breath. “I’ll cover up the food.”
He bit her earlobe and slapped her arse as he said, “Fuck yeah. Hurry up.”
He moved past her and disappeared down the hallway. Jasmine took her time cleaning up, saying a silent prayer for a sign on how she was supposed to deal with this. She couldn’t be a fuck toy until she died. She shook her head, breathing through her nose, concentrating on the TV to keep her mind off things.
“And to news from the MMA world of a shocking end to an exhibition match. Current Women’s Bantamweight Champion Veronica Nash has defeated Australian Ava Beckinsale in Las Vegas, but both women were taken to hospital after the match. We would like to warn our viewers that the following images may be disturbing. Megan Jolt has more...”
Jasmine bolted to the living room, frantically pushing up the volume as the broadcaster continued.
“In one of the most brutal MMA matches seen in some time, both women failed to walk out of the match under their own power. Ava Beckinsale, in her professional debut, having to be resuscitated in the middle of the ring before being rushed to the nearest hospital...”
“Oh my God... Ava... ” Jasmine said, covering her mouth. She had finally seen Ava after all this time and it was on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance, oxygen mask over her face. Knocking on the wall from inside the bathroom was the signal Adam was waiting, but Jasmine barely registered it. She watched replays of the last few seconds of the fight, the towel being thrown and one of Ava’s trainers rushing over to her motionless body. Jasmine pressed her fingers harder into her lips, eyes glued to the screen. Not on Ava... she couldn’t look at her as she looked dead. Instead she focused on the trainer. She had seen him before, spoken to him quite a bit, years ago at Ava’s gym. He was an instructor. Yes, she had been to several of his classes with Ava.His name was... was... fuck. What was it?
A harder knock on the wall failed to snap Jasmine out of her concentration.What was his name? Shit.She knew it. It was right on the tip of her tongue.Wait... Jasmine ignored the smacking against the wall, getting her phone out and looking up the gym, calling it right there.
“Hi, I’m hoping you can help me. I want to sign up to your MMA classes, and I was wondering if you could give me some info, please?”
“Sorry, but we actually don’t run that class anymore. Our instructor left a while ago.”
“Oh really? Damn, I really liked that guy. He was a former MMA fighter, right?”
“Oh, you knew Ruben? Yeah, he was great.”
“Yes, he was. Thank you very much anyway.”
Jasmine hung up and quickly searched on her phone’s browser. It didn’t take long to find him. A few articles from years ago detailing the rise and fall of a talented fighter. Now that she had his last name, she could find him on social media and get in contact, her ultimate plan. Suddenly the thought that, after all these years, she was somehow closer to Ava brought forth a feeling of overwhelming excitement but also fear. She flicked her eyes to the TV as yet another news break showed the same clip of Ava getting resuscitated but this time via a camera phone.
“Hey! Are you coming in or what? It doesn’t take that long to put the lid on a fry pan,” came a shriek from the bathroom.